


Apres moi les deluge

by anthologia



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dubious Consent, Extremely Dubious Consent, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-03
Updated: 2013-12-03
Packaged: 2018-01-03 08:26:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1068250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthologia/pseuds/anthologia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His first act was to find the Doctor and level a sword to his throat. “You’ve grown pathetic, my dear Doctor,” the Master said. “Not my worthy adversary and hardly my intellectual equal.”</p>
<p>“Oh,” the Doctor said. “So that’s why the TARDIS let you in.” His fingers couldn’t quite stop moving, one two three four, but neither of them noticed. Not in those first few days, the Master too disgusted by his oldest enemy’s newfound apathy, and the Doctor so consumed by the beat that he wouldn’t be surprised to find it pouring out the walls, let alone his fingers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apres moi les deluge

**Author's Note:**

> Something I'd completely forgotten I'd written. For the prompt "AU in which the Doctor got the drums instead of the Master. Only it eventually drives him a bit madder than the Master ever was, but without making him evil. And the Master tries to take care of him, but of course with a mentally unstable person there are consent issues and he finds it very hard to resist the Doctor..." in a Doctor/Master kink meme.

One. Two. Three. Four.  
  
Even if he tries, now, he can’t remember what his life felt like before they started. Theta Sigma, so young and new, caught in wonder by the stories of mad old hermits on hills. So innocent. Until the Schism, until the drums.  
  
They were tiny, at first, hardly noticeable. Just his heartsbeat resounding in his mind. He wasn’t even certain they weren’t meant to be there, couldn’t know if it was just him who heard them or everyone. So he went on, and he went out into the universe, drowning the noise out with adventures and mad brilliant schemes and the adrenaline rush of saving the day. And then. And then the war, burning and turning his mind over with its wreckage. He was supposed to die, he _had_ to die. Condemning Gallifrey to death wasn’t genocide, it was suicide. At that moment, nothing else had mattered but ending the War, ending the beat of the War in his mind. The screams, the tears in the fabric of time itself.   
  
So you can _imagine_ it was a shock to him, waking up the next day with a brand-new body, brand-new ears, the newly-renewed thrum of drums in his head. He didn’t even leave his TARDIS for a regeneration. They drifted aimlessly, the TARDIS and he, she occasionally landing somewhere to tempt him out into the world, to do _something_. He could feel her worry in his mind, but somehow it didn’t feel as important as staying where he was, wandering her corridors cocooned in her warmth, hiding away from the universe he’d saved and the people he’d burned.   
  
Then one day someone politely knocked on the door. The man at the door, who respectfully introduced himself as Professor Yana, promptly launched the Doctor into transporting the remainder of humanity to their New Eden, their Utopia in the past. The TARDIS had to have done it deliberately, trying to yank him back out into the universe with his favourite species, even if he was just a means to an end for them, transportation from point A to point B – all except the Professor, his faithful companion who insisted he could find far more interesting things inside the labyrinth of the TARDIS than out. For most of the time, he was a low-maintenance companion, not requiring much more than the occasional question answered. The Doctor spent his days drumming a four-beat rhythm on the halls of the TARDIS while Professor Yana combed through the library, contentedly deepening his knowledge of the universe book by book until one day, one day he found a page with familiar symbols.  
  
His first act was to find the Doctor and level a sword to his throat. “You’ve grown pathetic, my dear Doctor,” the Master said. “Not my worthy adversary and hardly my intellectual equal.”  
  
“Oh,” the Doctor said. “So that’s why the TARDIS let you in.” His fingers couldn’t quite stop moving, one two three four, but neither of them noticed. Not in those first few days, the Master too disgusted by his oldest enemy’s newfound apathy, and the Doctor so consumed by the beat that he wouldn’t be surprised to find it pouring out the walls, let alone his fingers.

\--

  
The Master regenerated once to get the visage of Professor Yana out of his reflection in the mirror and took over several planets, Earth and a few of the Doctor’s other favourites, partly for the practice and partly to see if he could get a rise out of the Doctor. Eventually he grew so tired of the Doctor’s lack of resistance that he shot him in the hearts just for the hell of it, just to see if the next Doctor would be more interesting.   
  
The screaming, at least, was _very_ interesting. The Master had a moment to wonder if all the mass that had gone out of this new, skinny Doctor, all angles and ridiculous hair sticking up, had converted directly into his energy levels. One moment, the man stared around all dazed and bewildered, beautiful red blood stains on his stupid, boring jumper, and the next he started screaming and shouting nonsense, _they won’t stop, even if you shoot them they won’t stop, one! Two! Three! Four!_  
  
When he started banging his head against the wall to emphasize his point, the Master realized that somehow, things had gotten a little out of hand. It only took a moment for him to overpower the Doctor’s regeneration-sick mind, override his control and suggest that _maybe_ , just maybe now might be a good time to shut down and get some sleep. And then, for some reason he couldn’t quite fathom, the Master actually felt the urge to _catch_ the Doctor as his knees buckled under him so that he could prevent further injury to that ridiculously, stupidly _fragile_ -looking body. With the Doctor insisting on acting like an utterly self-destructive _maniac_ , this just wasn’t _fun_ anymore.  
  
So.  
  
The Doctor woke up in a bed. Comfortable, warm, even tucked in somewhat. And shot up with a dose of sedative – the Master didn’t want his old friend, favourite enemy, and now, apparently, patient waking up and running around disturbing the peace and quiet. And besides, the half-lidded eyes, the soft moan as he woke up, the thrill of the Doctor so completely at his mercy was just too delicious to give up. The Master may have been giving up his life of mayhem, _temporarily_ , just until he’d restored status quo, but that didn’t mean he was willing to abstain altogether from the simple pleasures life had to offer.  
  
“My interest never lay in medicinal psionics, Doctor,” he said, as soon as he was sure the Doctor was conscious enough to understand him. “So you’ll pardon me if my bedside manner is less than correct.” Before the Doctor, sleep-stupid and sedated, could object or (more importantly) throw up defenses, he began the process of melding his mind into the Doctor’s. Not too close in, of course, as he wasn’t a complete idiot, but enough that he could begin the process of searching through the Doctor’s mind for the source of the latest crack in his sanity. Of course it didn’t take long. The four beat rhythm, the sound of drums, was so prevalent in the Doctor’s consciousness that he’d have had to have been psychically deaf and _blind_ not to notice the damn thing. Poking around it revealed that the source, whatever it was, was perfectly willing to root itself in another compatible mind as well, so he pulled out as fast as he could without risking injury to his or the Doctor’s mind. No point in taking chances.  
  
Annoyingly, during the process the Doctor had somehow found the presence of mind to leech his hand onto the Master’s. The look he had on his face, the near-tears and hope, was so trusting and hearts-breakingly pathetic that the Master found himself frustratingly unable to resist.  
  
“ _Fine_ ,” he snapped. “But as soon as this is fixed, it’s back to worthy adversaries and death traps every other Saturday.”

 

\--

  
He wasn’t even sure how the Doctor managed to become even _more_ pathetically needy than he had been before, but he couldn’t escape it from that moment on. It came off the man in waves, it seeped through the Master’s pores like poison. The more the Doctor needed him, the more he found himself responding – a hand to hold, the brush of a comforting pat on his shoulder, an impromptu snogging session in the middle of psychic melding. Whatever felt right at the moment.   
  
Now that he’d let himself fall, the descent into obsession with the source of the infestation in the Doctor’s mind was inevitable. The drums were like a virus of the mind, growing, adapting, resisting all his attempts to uproot it. After a time, longer than his pride would have allowed himself to admit, he finally came to the conclusion that the only way to get rid of the damn things was to boost the signal and see what came knocking.  
  
Naturally, given his genius, it only took a couple days to rig up something adequate for the purpose from the inane odds and ends the Doctor kept in his TARDIS. Of course _he_ was no help, too busy whimpering and clutching his head and hallucinating previous assistants or whatever it was he did when the Master wasn’t actively keeping an eye on him.   
  
For practical and personal reasons, of course, he threw a few hours into constructing the chair. Sedating the Doctor would have the adverse effect of dulling the signal in his mind, and left to his own devices the man never stood still for more than a minute, so naturally the Master had to rig up a chair with all sorts of straps and such to keep him in place. The effect was very savage, very early-days insane asylum, and the Master couldn’t help but stop to admire the view before getting down to business. At some point, the Doctor had decided the leather jacket and jumper his previous regeneration had preferred wasn’t suited to him anymore, and so had shown up wearing some sort of pinstriped suit. It was better-fitted and therefore slightly more pleasing to the eyes, but the Master couldn’t help but think that, artistically and aesthetically speaking, it might be better off than on.   
  
As he went about fixing that, with momentary pauses to examine the effect, he happened to let slip an “I think I deserve a reward for this, don’t you?” To his surprise, the Doctor nodded at this, though for all the Master knew at this point the Doctor could have been under the impression he was agreeing to an ice cream and a long walk on the beach. Then again, Theta always did have a little taste for the kinky, the Master thought – and straddling the Doctor was _just_ what had been missing from the picture. The Master was pleased, _very_ pleased to find the Doctor’s erection already straining against his trousers, and the little gasps and moans as the Master palmed it were _almost_ worth the torturous months of putting up with his irritating insanity. Having the Doctor under him, so very utterly subject to his mere will, to any thought he so chose to act upon, made up for the rest – if only he didn’t have to share the Doctor with the drums, it would have been complete. The thought drove him to ride the Doctor on harder, to dig his fingernails into the Doctor’s skin and think about what he would do to whatever creature had the _gall_ to infect _his_ property, _his_ enemy, _his_ Doctor–   
  
He was almost shocked to hear the Doctor’s broken mind echo _yours_ into his, and the two of them came all at once, in a perfect rhythm on its own, off-beat to the drums. For once, the Doctor _truly_ was his and his alone, and the thought left him energized, ready to take on the very hounds of hell. He all but sprinted to the signal booster, so ready to finish this, hands on the lever to switch it on.  
  
“ _Now_ , then,” he said, “let’s _see_ what’s been knocking on our door.”  
  
For a moment, there was nothing.  
  
And then all hell broke loose.


End file.
